Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
10-9-2019
SSRN Discipline
Legal Scholarship Network; PSN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Legal Anthropology eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; AARN Subject Matter eJournals; Cultural Anthropology eJournals; Political Science Network; Anthropology & Archaeology Research Network; Political Economy - Development eJournals
Abstract
On November 11 1999 in a small village in India's most populous state a middleaged woman named Charan Shah died on her husband's funeral pyre Charan's death quickly gained national notoriety as the first sati or widow immolation to occur in over 20 years Equally quickly commentators developed a preoccupation with procedural minutiae that would influence coverage of subsequent satis Ultimately several progressive commentators came to the counterintuitive conclusion that the ritually anomalous nature of Charan's death confirmed its voluntary secular and noncriminal nature brbrThis paper argues that the "unlabeling" of Charan Shah's death like those of other women between 1999"“2006 reflects a tension between the nonindividuated impervious model of personhood exemplified by sati and the particularized citizensubject of liberaldemocratic politics in India In a twist on "recognition" scholarship both state and nonstate critics seem to fear not yearn for a return to idealized notions of precolonial authenticity Their perplexing responses to seemingly "authentic" contemporary immolations suggest that something more than cultural authenticity or gendered agency places sati beyond the comprehension of liberalism and its legal forms That something is the inability of liberaldemocratic politics and the legal infrastructure to which it gives rise to accommodate alternative models of personhood
Recommended Citation
Deepa Das Acevedo,
Changing the Subject of Sati,
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/fac_working_papers/408